Island Paradise
by Wolfen Kahlon
Summary: Events take a different turn after the sinking of Red Shield's ship. This island is no paradise, and Saya finds herself marooned with only one other for company... Spoilers up to and including episode 32. No particular romance but implied Saya x Haji.


I do not own Blood+ or any of these characters, they are the property of Production I.G.

For author's notes please see my Live Journal, accessible from my profile page.

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It was always dark and humid here, lit only by distant fires and tumbling flares obscured by endless jungle. Gunshots and screams filled the air and she knew that soon she would have to take up her sword again, and kill, and kill, and kill, until only the monsters would walk at her side.

Cold. Why was it cold? It was always oppressively hot here. A warm body embraced her, lips gently met hers and the coppery tang of blood entered her mouth. She drank it down even though she hated it, he would always support her in what she had to do no matter the cost to himself.

"Haji." She murmured when the lips left her. "I'm sorry." The warmth released her for a moment and then returned, again lips met hers with a blood meal. Again? Her hand reached up and found loose tresses of wet hair hanging unbound. Something was not right. As the lips withdrew she opened her eyes and looked into the grinning, blue-eyed face of insanity.

"Diva."

"Oh good!" Diva declared in response. "Saya-neesama is finally awake!" Saya gave up any attempt to comprehend the sheer surreality of the situation and simply reacted. She tightened her grip in Diva's hair and then she threw Diva from herself with all her strength. Saya started to roll in the opposite direction, to put some distance between them, but nearly collided with a corpse that lay beside her; the man's throat had been torn open and Saya realised that this must be the source of the blood she had just drunk. Sickened, she quickly stood and surveyed her surroundings before focusing her attention on Diva.

It was early morning, and they were the only living beings visible on a white sanded beach, sandwiched between clear blue ocean and thick verdant forest, and littered with bloody corpses and pieces of military equipment. She remembered the fight on the ship, and supposed she must have washed up here after the explosion. But these men did not look like Red Shield members, they were unkempt and dressed in a wide variety of mismatched military fatigues, nothing like the stoic men in suits.

Diva was standing up, spitting sand, and rubbing it from the side of her face. She looked how Saya felt: soaked to the skin, and spattered with blood, clothes ragged and caked with sand.

Lacking her sword Saya desperately searched for a weapon. The body at her feet wore a knife sheath but the knife was missing, in fact every corpse in view was similarly dispossessed though guns abounded as if to taunt her with their uselessness. Diva giggled.

"I thought neesama might be boring and try to kill me again. So I threw everything sharp out to sea before I woke her." She said with a self satisfied smile.

"Why!?" Saya demanded.

"I just said!" Diva pouted "Because I knew you'd--"

"Why didn't you try to kill me!? Why did you-- would you…" Saya put a hand to her mouth, lips still wet with blood, disgust warred with embarrassment; Diva had been much more _eager_ in her ministrations than Haji had, the way that sometimes when she thought of Haji she… but something else rose in her memory now, driving all other thoughts aside. Riku. What Diva had done, and now she stood here without guilt.

"Oh _that_! Because I can't find Karl and all the humans here are nasty and disgusting and smell, and tried to shoot me so I had to kill them, and I'm cold and wet, and I don't know how to make a fire, and I need a new dress and I'm tired and bored." She declared as if this answered everything. Indeed she looked rather surprised when Saya hit her with a flying tackle that knocked her off her feet, and tried to strangle her.

"What do you want from me!?" Saya screamed at her before Diva punched her in the face hard enough to knock her flying.

"I'm bored with this game already." Diva whined, rubbing at bruises that were already fading. Game? Saya wondered if it might as well have been, both were already back on their feet with no sign of injury; without a blade there was no way she could kill Diva. "As for what I want." Diva continued. "Well, a fire would be nice."

"Why the hell should I do anything for you!?" This gave Diva pause, she put a finger to her chin and stared contemplatively into the middle distance while tapping her foot.

"I suppose sisterly love is right out," She mused. "you've been pretty insistent on trying to kill me so far. A selfish reason perhaps? Ah! I've got it!" She crowed. "Saya-neesama can't find her Chevalier, and she's cold and wet and has no-one else here but me." She leaned forward and gave Saya a winning smile. Saya's reply was to turn around, sit down on the sand and blatantly ignore her. A childish action she immediately felt embarrassed about; Diva's reaction however: declaring that "Saya-neesama is being mean again." and stomping off toward the tree-line, made her feel better in spite of everything.

Still, Diva's assessment of her situation was fairly accurate, the _feeling_ of Haji's absence was as real as the cold and the damp in her clothes. She suspected he was further away than he'd ever been since she first met him (again). Her stomach growled as if to add its own complaint about her situation, Kai would have told her to stop moping and eat something, he must be far away too, and Riku… she shied away from that thought for now, she was alone except for--. No. Diva didn't count. She _was_ alone here.

She picked up a tin that lay in the sand near her resting place. Diva had been very efficient in her search for blades, most of the stuff which lay among the corpses came from upended packs and inverted pockets. Her fingers found a loop of metal on the side of the tin. _Lift that part, and turn it like a key._ There were no labels or markings on the tin but it was probably some sort of ready to eat ration. The spiralling strip of metal that the inbuilt opener lifted away, revealed a strange sort of meat: red and somehow primitively processed, a patternless grain. It was familiar, although she could not remember where she'd seen it before; she knew what it would taste like even before she ate the first piece, broken away with her fingers for want of cutlery. She realised that she must have eaten it before. Before her long sleep. An oddly mundane memory, at least it didn't bring any others to the surface.

A dull clatter alerted her to Diva's return as she dumped a large pile of broken branches almost right on Saya's feet. A moment later a piece of meat seemed to vanish from Saya's fingers: Diva had snatched it with a movement too fast to see.

"Bleah, human food?" She sniffed it delicately then pulled a face. "No wonder Saya-neesama is so weak, she should eat some real food before it goes bad." She tossed the piece of meat while gesturing at the corpses. Suddenly she stopped still, intent on something on the ground a glittering object in the sand, which she swooped down upon before holding it aloft in victory. It was a simple, red-plastic lighter. Diva then crouched down beside the heap of branches and attempted to light them. After the tenth time that the flames sputtered for a moment before extinguishing, she singed her thumb on the overheated metal of the lighter-top and threw it at the ground hard enough to half bury it in the sand. She proceeded to sit there pouting and glaring at her poor attempt at a fire in a way that spoke louder than words.

"It needs dry wood in the middle for kindling." Saya surprised herself by speaking. It was true though, most of the branches Diva had gathered were too large and green to burn by themselves, some still had green leaves or moss on them, one was freshly broken and oozing sap. Diva looked at her with an indecipherable expression for a moment then picked the lighter back up and dropped it down the front of her dress, as if for safe keeping. She then proceeded to dart around the beach collecting pieces of driftwood. She carefully inspected each before she added to her collection; a piece with one end soaked in blood was discarded in the same easy manner as one soaked with water from a shattered canteen. When she had gathered what most people would consider an excessive amount of kindling, she returned to the woodpile and began arranging it all in a way that, at the most followed the vague instruction of "dry wood in the middle." Apparently satisfied, she reached down the front of her dress and searched for her lighter in a fashion that caused Saya to avert her eyes in embarrassment. Having found it, Diva at last lit the fire, with the aid of a chance breeze that miraculously fanned the tiny flame; which Diva promptly abandoned the second it caught, in favour of jumping to her feet and giving a little cheer of victory.

Practically skipping around the beach she began gathering other items for the next step of whatever strange plan she had devised. Saya meanwhile, scooted back a little from the fire, not that she expected it to do much once the kindling burnt away, but Diva had built it almost on top of her feet. Possibly she had moved just in time; the flames were once more fortuitously fanned, this time by the groundsheet Diva was spreading on the sand nearby. Diva also had four rifles tucked under one arm, which confused Saya until Diva jammed them barrel first into the sand around the fire, and hung her shoes and the two parts of her dress from the butts to dry. This did however cause Saya some alarm, since that was _everything _that Diva had been wearing.

"What are you doing!?" She finally demanded as Diva lay down on the groundsheet without so much as a blush.

"Getting some sleep. Dragging you to shore was very tiring." She yawned. Saya could not find any response to that revelation; it did not matter though, Diva was already asleep.

Saya sat in thought for the next few minutes, while the kindling burnt itself out and the sun rose in the sky; staring at the empty tin in her hands without really seeing it until she realised that now that it was open it had a sharp edge. She could cut into her hand with that edge, take a mouthful of blood; she was certain that Diva would be entirely accepting of an unexpected kiss in her sleep, especially one filled with blood. And then, that would be it. There would still be the Chevaliers and the victims of their experiments to hunt down but there would never be any more Chiropterans than there were now. Diva would be dead. It would be over. Finished.

Saya watched her sister sleep for a long time. As the sun rose so did the temperature, until she could practically feel her clothes drying on her.

"…Didn't need a fire." She said at last.


End file.
